The death of Lynne Spalding, found earlier this month in a San Francisco hospital stairwell two weeks after she disappeared from her room, underscores the need for health systems to implement a culture that guarantees patient safety, according to an opinion piece posted on the U-T San Diego website.
Spalding is among the more than 200,000 patients who die preventable deaths in U.S. hospitals each year — the equivalent of two jumbo jets crashing and killing everyone on board every day, wrote Joe Kiani founder of The Patient Safety Movement Foundation.
Health care-associated infections, failure to monitor post-op patients, failure to rescue, suboptimal blood transfusions, medication errors, and the inability of medical devices to communicate with each other lead to preventable deaths. Yet these and other causes of preventable patient deaths have solutions that can be implemented today, Kiani said
According to Kiani,steps to help eradicate preventable patient deaths include:
• Create a system of transparency.
• Incentivize and dis-incentivize safety
• Create a “Patient Data Super Highway"
• Create a safe harbor for reporting mistakes
• Focus on patient dignity
Read the article.
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